12 June 2016

#D2T16NYC Ending - #100DayProject - Day 073

When this posts, I will be finishing up one of the most amazing professional development experiences of my career and heading home to my family. I am so grateful to have been able to take part in this experience with the Driven2Teach program and I promise I will be sharing some of my reflections with you, but I wanted to start my reflection story with the end.

If you want to fully learn something, you have to immerse yourself in it. Do you have to physically go somewhere to have that immersive experience? No, but it certainly doesn't hurt. But you don't have to physically be anywhere because you can allow yourself to fully commit to the latest learning. But being able to physically move yourself to the location you are learning about doesn't hurt the learning but instead increases it exponentially.

What were my big takeaways from this experience? Relationships are crucial to the level of success you allow yourself to have. I came to this learning moment alone and yet I'm so excited to have been able to meet amazing teachers from across the great state of Utah. So I feel like coming alone was successful for me? Yes. Would I make that same decision to come alone without my grade-level team? Yes because it forced me to get to know the others in the group.

Another takeaway is you have to be willing to try new things and not get embarrassed by silliness. Life is messy and the sooner we realize that the better because it will help us open up and share. I spent time with people I didn't really know before Sunday and now we're great pals. I did certain activities that I may not have done before and really enjoyed them. Give new people and new things a chance because you never know what will change you.

The final takeaway is being prepared and willing to share your knowledge and skills with others around you. I always travel with an assortment of tech gadgets and yet I don't always use them. But I love the fact that I'm prepared and was able to, in fact, share my cables for all sorts of things happening with the group. I also carried a first aid kit the entire time because you don't want to be stranded.

Be on the watch out for chances to learn from those things and people.